


Cast No Shadow

by Nokomis



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Gen, Set post-7x05, no spoilers from the leaks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 12:52:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11829141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: Conversations about women around the campfire beyond the Wall. (Post 7x05)





	Cast No Shadow

**Author's Note:**

> I have avoided all spoilers from all leaks, so this is set purely post-Eastwatch. Avoiding spoilers is SO HARD you guys. But I had to indulge in this because these men need to talk about women around the campfire, in what is no doubt a pointless story given that the next episode is already out there. Thanks for reading <3

At night, the dragon’s screams had seemed to echo through Dragonstone’s rooms. Jon’s chambers faced the ocean, and he slept with the window ajar, letting the cold, fresh air into the musty-seeming room.

The first night, he couldn’t sleep at all. Not because of the Targaryen queen’s words, or the fact that he was essentially a prisoner, but because he could hear the shrieks and beating of wings outside. Every time he closed his eyes, they seemed to echo through his chambers, matching his heartbeat exactly.

It’s almost a relief to head beyond the Wall.

The first night, Tormund and Jon found a spot to camp tucked under an overhang, out of the cutting wind and likely dry enough to start a fire. They start packing snow to create a wall around the group, and after a few minutes the others join in. 

Finally, they’ve done what they can to conserve as much heat as possible, and settle in for the night. Tormund chanced a small fire-- the smoke would likely be invisible against the nighttime sky, and the snow-walls are high enough to shield the flickering light. They’re unsure about the intelligence of wights themselves, but Bran had been specific that the Night’s King was included in the march and the other White Walkers would no doubt report to him.

All they have now was silence and each other, this motley crew of survivors. Jon had been lucky in that preparations for this journey had taken over after their initial meeting, and no one had pushed too hard about the resentment and anger that simmered between too many different factions of the party. 

Ser Jorah was the first to break the silence that had fallen. “How is it that a bastard of the Night’s Watch is now King in the North?”

“Hell of a good question,” agreed Dondarrion, looking at Jon with interest. “Thought the vows were for life. Or do you get a pass, since it would be a struggle to cut off your own head?”

Jon held his hands out to the flickering flames, letting the warmth sink into his bones. It reminded him of dragon’s scales, and how they’d felt like rocks left in the sun on the brightest summer’s day, even when standing on an icy cliff at the dawn of winter. “My watch ended,” he said simply.

Tormund took Jon’s curtness as hesitance, and added, “Bloody crows stabbed the fucker a dozen times over for letting my people through the wall.” He clapped Jon on the back hard enough to make Jon nearly tip over. “S’why I’m here. Can’t let a fuckin’ southerner die for the Free Folk and not be willin’ to do the same.”

Jon could feel the eyes boring into him, and he tried to keep his focus on the flames, and the sensation of having warm extremities. In the coming days that feeling would fade into a cherished memory, he knew from experience.

But something in him that he didn’t want to examine too closely made him look back up at Ser Jorah. 

There was something brittle and angry about the set of his mouth, and Jon didn’t feel triumphant at all to see it. 

“So you’ve been touched by the Lord of Light,” Thoros said, taking a slow sip from his wineskin. “See anything in that fire you can’t keep your eyes off of?”

Jon was hardly going to confess he was daydreaming about a dragon, so he simply said, “No.”

Gendry shot him a look. He’d been sold to Melisandre, he’d said. Jon could defend himself, tell them that he hadn’t wanted a rebirth, hadn’t asked for this strange second life where he’d been thrust into power and burdened with knowing the scope of the danger threatening the known world, but he couldn’t. He was grateful that he’d been given a chance to not end his life bleeding out in the snow, never knowing that his sisters and brother still lived. 

Something on his face must have told the others that he wasn’t interested in following this line of conversation, and no one said anything when Jon said he was going take a sleep shift first. 

With Tormund nearby, Jon found it easy to close his eyes and drift off to the low rumble of conversation around the fire.

Something woke him up, a little while later. He wasn’t sure at first what it was, then realized slowly that it had been his sister’s name. Thoros, Gendry and Thoros were sleeping, and the others were hunched around the fire. Dondarrion and Tormund were on watch; the Hound just had the look of a man who rarely slept well in the presence of others.

“He left the north to be governed by a little girl?” Dondarrion was saying. “I remember seeing her in King’s Landing, before Stark was beheaded. Flighty, sweet little thing. Pretty, though.”

Jon didn’t move, but watched quietly from his spot behind the men. It gave him the perfect vantage to see a dark look pass across the Hound’s face. 

Tormund burst out laughing. “Somehow manages to be prettier than her brother, aye, but sweet isn’t the word I’d use for that one. Vicious as any spearwife, she is.”

“Vicious? Sure you’re talking about the right girl?” The Hound said, his voice a low rumble. “The little wolf bitch is bloodthirsty as they come, but the older one’s got her head in songs.”

“Sansa, that’s the one. Kissed by fire,” Tormund said, tugging at a lock of his own hair. “Killed that shit of a husband of hers with a smile on her face. Never seen a man fed to his own dogs before, but can’t say the fucker didn’t deserve it.”

The Hound stared at Tormund, jaw slack as he seemed to take a moment for the words to sink in. “Huh,” he said finally. His tone was strangely soft, but his brow furrowed like he was ready to hit something.

Jon slowly unclenched his fists and slowly stretched, rising from his warm nest within his cloak to return to the fire. “I’ll take over,” he told Dondarrion. He’d slept for longer than he’d thought, he could now tell, because the sky had the quiet pre-dawn quality that Jon had always loved.

Tormund offered Jon a wineskin, and he accepted it. 

“You talk too much,” Jon told him after a few long drinks had warmed his belly. 

“You don’t talk enough,” Tormund told him cheerfully. The Hound snorted, and Jon offered him the drink.

The Hound stared at it for a long moment before taking a long pull. “They said you left your sister in charge of the north while you’re up here trying to kill yourself?”

Jon nodded. “You knew her, I’m guessing?”

“Both of ‘em,” The Hound said roughly. He looked like he wanted to say more, but the words wouldn’t come.

The flames had died while Jon slept, and all that was left were smoldering embers. “Sansa’s doing a better job at it than I would be, no doubt.”

“Did you kill that slimy little motherfucker before you left?” Tormund asked. “I would have, if he’d been sniffing round one of my women like that.”

“Sansa can handle herself,” Jon said. She’d said she could, anyhow, and Jon trusted her. Tormund raised an eyebrow at him. “And Brienne is with her. And Ghost.”

Tormund nodded, satisfied. “Aye, I wondered where the beast was.”

Leaving Ghost behind felt like leaving a limb behind. It was a constant ache, and in his dreams he wandered the halls of Winterfell. Ghost had spent the night hunting in the godswood, unwilling to go far from his pack. At Dragonstone he’d woken from wolf dreams to the sound of dragon’s shrieks constantly, and it had left him feeling unmoored.

Here, it had the opposite effect.

“Slimy motherfucker?” The Hound asked, drawing Jon’s thoughts away from his wolf.

“Baelish,” Jon said shortly. He wanted to ask about Arya, to know about what she’d gone through in her time away from family, but he hoped that he would live to hear it in her own words. “Arya’s returned to Winterfell, too.”

The Hound grunted, though he seemed pleased. Out of the corner of his eye Jon could see Jorah stirring.

Tormund said, “Another one of you?”

Jon smiled. “You’ll like Arya. She’s-- she’s a bit like Ygritte.”

“Of course you fit in with us Free Folk, you appreciate women with spirit.” Tormund laughed suddenly, clearly having just remembered something. “Did I ever tell you how Ygritte swore she’d wear your fun bits round her neck after you left?”

Jon pressed a hand to the spot on his leg where her arrow had gone the deepest. “My leg still aches in the cold. She hit bone.” He smiled, and Tormund clearly understood. They both knew Ygritte could have put an arrow in his heart or throat just as easily.

“So you already have a woman?” Jorah’s voice was raspy with the cold and hope. 

Jon shook his head. 

“Ygrittte died, years ago now,” Tormund said. “Killed by a crow.” He glanced at Jon.

“He’s dead now, too,” Jon said, and something tense eased in Tormund’s shoulders. Watching Olly hang still weighed heavily on Jon, but some small part of him had felt more like he was granting justice for Ygritte than himself. 

Jorah’s disappointment was palpable. Even the Hound seemed to catch on to it. Jon didn’t say anything; there was nothing to say. 

Jorah clearly felt otherwise. “She’s too good for you.”

Jon nudged a stick back into the fire’s remains, sending glowing embers floating through the air. “How does a queen who prides herself on being the breaker of chains feel about the slaver by her side?”

Jorah’s shoulders tightened like he’d just taken a punch. “Too good for me, too. But I know what she’s been through and I’m not going to let some bloody Stark come along and steal--”

“I’m not a Stark,” Jon interrupted. “And I’m not here freezing my ass off chasing down the most terrifying fucking thing I’ve ever seen to impress anyone. Wait until after we’ve seen the Night King’s army. If you think I’m doing this for anything less than the survival of all my people, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Beside him, Tormund sighed and nudged Jon in the ribs. “Besides, he’s bad at stealin’ women. Though stealing a dragon queen does seem like the type of stupid shit he’d pull.”

“I didn’t try to steal her,” Jon muttered, gesturing toward the frozen wasteland around him. “I wouldn’t be out here trying to prove my bloody point to everyone if it was that simple.”

Jorah’s glare intensified. 

The Hound let out a surprised bark of laughter. “Boy’s got a point,” he told Jorah. “Though look at royally everyone in buggering Westeros got fucked last time there was woman-stealing between a dragon and a wolf.”

“I’m not looking to repeat history, either,” Jon said. Dawn was beginning to break, and the final members of their party were starting to stir. Soon they would go out into the wasteland and seek out the dead. Gendry sat beside him, offering jerky to break his fast.

Gendry had spoken to him on the trip sailing north, talking about Arya in a soft voice that made Jon think that history was doomed to repeat. Hopefully this time, they could get it right.

Hopefully this time, they could change things for the good.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [tumblr](http://nokomiss.tumblr.com/)!


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